There’s Always the Fall
“Sorry we didn’t get down to see you this summer,” our good friend, Mike told me on a recent phone conversation. Mike was my “Godbrother” growing up and our mothers were best friends. They usually make a couple of trips down, but they’ve been busy this year purchasing and remodeling their lake home, which they will use in retirement.
“It’s ok, the only thing we could have done was sit inside anyway,” I told him, “Maybe you can get down here this fall.”
And so this summer goes, I think after this prolonged heat – it reached 114 degrees in our area yesterday – we’re all ready for fall.
I know many of my friends have given up on their flower and vegetable gardens, but I continue to keep watering my tomatoes and cucumbers and potted flowers on the deck. They are hanging in there, but they aren’t as perky as they would be had we some reprieve from the heat.
The cucumber plant, which began the season full and flowery has only produced 3 scrawny cucumbers, but at least it is trying. Most of the blooms experience a day or two of this heat and shrivel up.
It was cloudy this morning, but I watered anyway, the rain has been skirting around us and while it smelled like rain earlier this morning, that smell just gave way to a cloudy, muggy day. It feels as if we’re being collectively smothered under one of those wool blankets I hated when I was a kid.
Dale has been cranky and exhausted each day when he comes home from the “blast furnace” of working in a non-climate controlled garage every day.
Kids in our town start school the week after next, which signals that this weather won’t last forever.
A couple of activities I’m looking forward to as soon as fall arrives:
Dale finally putting my Baby Blazer back together. We finally found and bought original parts from a Blazer that had been sold to a local junkyard. Bonus! It’s the same color as mine so we will not have to go to the expense of painting it right away.
Fishing and just being on the lake. As Dale put it, “This year, we’ve had two seasons, cold and hot. No, make that four. We had cold and colder and hot and hotter.” After a cold wet spring that brought flooding to our area again, the heat sank in immediately afterward.
We haven’t even had our boat out since last fall.
Two cookouts. We’ve finally met enough people and made a few friends and we hope Dale can try some of his new recipes for our friends.
What are you looking forward to when the weather breaks this fall?
It has been hot! I hope you have cooler temps now. Of course, my BIL and his family happened to visit during the hottest part of the summer. I was bummed that some of the things we’d planned weren’t so fun in the heat. Ah well, it made the beach feel good.
We are getting much cooler temps now, thank goodness. I do hope this nice weather will last throughout September and October. We could use some nice weather here!
I think of the farners and farm families, too.
Yes, Kerry. Horrible for them as well.
I’ve experienced 114 in the dry desert heat of Arizona. I can’t imagine that same temperature in the hot, humid south. I hope you’ll experience an early fall that brinks those slightly crisp days with cornflower blue skies.
Thank you, Donna! So do I!
Wow!! It’s been hot in New England but nothing like that. Fall will be a welcomed change for sure.
Very much so, Susan. It’s usually hot here in the south, but nothing like this and not as prolonged.
HI Kerri,
Weather report on our part here in Greece: it has been a very strange summer for us too. The high temperatures came a month late and till now it has been warm but not blazing hot. Very pleasant, actually but a bit worrisome because it is NOT normal at all!
In a book I read about climate change which predicts how every one degree of average higher planetary temperatures would affect the Earth (up to 6 degrees which would be apocalyptic), the first 1 degree rise ushers in lower general temperatures for Europe. Of course this is only one summer, but still…
I am sorry that you are having a tough time of it there and I hope that you get some relief soon! All the best.
Thanks, Vida, good hearing from you in your part of the world! Actually, when we were in Germany in the summer of 2007, we had to borrow jackets and long sleeved shirts from our daughter and future son in law. It was very chilly when we were there in July. Are you sure this is the only summer you’ve felt cooler temps there in Greece?
Hi Kerri,
Down in the Southern Med it’s usually too hot to do any gardening work by the 15th of May. Sometimes July is the hottest month with temperatures over 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees F) We’ve had years with heat waves and temperatures at 45 degrees C (113 degrees F) which is still considered normal. So, yes, this is extremely unusual weather for a summer in Greece!
Not to be a downer, but the record breaking heat this year is more than just uncomfortable – it’s a sign of environmental trouble. Have you read Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet? VERY eye opening and easy to read. I just started another book called Climate Wars. Eye opening, but kind of dry. In any case, we need to stop living the way we’re living – NOW. (I hope fall temps arrive soon!)
Yes, I’ve written about the impending environmental problems, it’s very easy to see them as connected to the earth as we are here. Animals acting abnormally, the extremes in the weather. All bad signs. I haven’t read those books, but will get them on my list.
It’s so hot here too. It’s kind of discouraging. But I DREAD the short days in the winter. Love everything about the fall except that it leads to winter…
I know, Jennifer. I love the warm sunny days in the fall that give away to crisp nights. But I do not like winter at all. Too bad that is one season we couldn’t skip.
The daffodils are starting to bloom in my yard. Spring here we come!
LOL, Frugal. How long did it take you to get used to the switched seasons down in New Zealand?
I’ve never minded Christmas in summer-no huge meals and all that anymore. It does feel weird to have my late August birthday in Spring though. That hasn’t stopped feeling odd even after nearly 8 years now.
Oh, I bet. My birthday is in December and I would be very unbalanced if I could go swimming on it! 🙂
Being Canadian I don’t know fahrenheit so I converted it to Celsius and went “Whoa – that’s hot!”
Our summer, on the other hand, has been cool and wet. It has rained every 2 days out of 3 and I still wear a jacket many days.
I’m not looking forward to fall since we apparently skipped both spring and summer this year.
Oh, how I long for some heat – but not THAT much!
I know what you mean, Olivia. I wish we could collide our two weather systems and come up with some perfect for both of us!
I officially hate the weather this summer. It’s been either too hot or too rainy to ride my motorcycle for the last month…mostly too hot–this rainy thing is new. I finally was able to fix (mostly) the carburetors this year and I’m going into month 23 since I’ve ridden. New battery, new tires, rebuilt carbs…and no dice.
I know what you mean, Mat. I’m really antsy to get out on the water and to have my own wheels back under me! It will change and then we’ll probably have something new to complain about. 😉
114 degrees would do me in. Colorado/Denver had like a 20-day stretch with temps in the 90s, but it broke recently. It’s actually 71 degrees here on the mtn today. Cloudy, rainy, etc.
I have a lot of emotional angst in the fall with many family death anniversaries and shorter days, so I’m not looking forward to much about the fall. It’s not my best time of year.
I wish I could send our cool temps via email. Hang in there.
Oh, me too, Roxanne, and I wish the upper Midwest could send some rain via email to Texas! 😉 I have anniversaries spread out throughout the year, so I cannot let those get me down, or I would be in a state of depression always! I don’t like the shorter days, but I do love warm days and cool nights and there is a time when I even look forwad to the fires, although I get tired of those by the end of winter. Hang in there.
Humidity always packs an extra wallop of “fun” to the heat (haha). We have drier heat in CA where we live, but it can be intense. I tend to like the heat actually, but enjoy it more at night, or when in the shade. I’m not a direct-sun person in the least!
Yes, we have that high humidity that makes it just exhausting. Although when I was in Nevada, I didn’t think the dry heat felt much better! I went out with the dogs at 10 p.m. last night and it was just miserable. We’re getting a little relief today with a little rain and cloud cover.
My daughter and I are starting kindergarten as homeschoolers in a couple of weeks. I’m looking forward to that… and to being able to get the kids to the park to run and play. We’ve been trapped inside for weeks by this heat, other than a couple of trips to the pool and the river. I’m not going ANYWHERE when it’s over 105!
I think of you and our other forest-dwelling friends often… praying for no wildfires. All the downed wood from the ice storms must be perfect kindling by now. The dryness (along with these pop-up thunderstorms that never drop more than a tenth of an inch of rain) scares me.
Thanks, KIm. We are worried about fires as well as our tress dying from lack of moisture. We got a small amount of rain today, but not near enough. Congrats on your adventure home schooling. Is this a first for you? I can’t remember how old your little ones are.
Oy, that heat sounds awful, Kerri. We all melt up here in Michigan when it gets up in the 90s, which it’s been for a few weeks. Cooler the last few days. I feel for you guys and my friends in Texas with their brutally hot summer.
Yes, Jane, Oklahoma and Texas to our west has it worse. There’s always something worse, it seems.
We are having 70s after weeks of 80s and 90s on Cape Cod. Cannot even imagine 108.
70s? Heaven.
It’s raining right now, Kathleen! Thank you for sending it our way. 🙂 I know, really, the past two summers have been awful. Here’s hoping you get to ride a little today.
Oh yay! Glad to hear that some rain found its way to you!
It’s been so brutal here too, Kerri. Being housebound by the heat is just terribly depressing to me. I haven’t been on my horse in a month. She heats up so fast that within a few minutes, she’s covered in lathered up sweat, even though she’s a young and very fit animal. We’ve spent very little time at the place we love most, our prairie. In summers past, it’s the spot you’d most likely find us during any free time we have. But, it hasn’t even been cooling down in the evenings to any reasonable temperature, so strolling over to our land after David comes home from work, hasn’t been an option.
It’s frightening and depressing to me, that this is perhaps only the beginning of unbearable summertime heat. I grew up spending summers at my grandparents’ farm in north Missouri, with no air conditioning. My husband and I have camped during summer’s most searing heat, in the past. I don’t consider myself spoiled or too fragile to deal with high temps, but this year has been different. It’s simply not possible to be out in this kind of weather for any length of time without feeling the intensity of it getting to you.
Last night we had some wonderful thunderstorms roll through and so this morning it’s overcast and cooler than the past four weeks. I’m hoping to take advantage of the break by riding my horse today and maybe even walking over to the prairie. I hope rain makes its way to your neck of the woods soon!